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with an ecstatic smile of love. “I am like a hungry man who has been
given food. He may be cold, and dressed in rags, and ashamed, but he
is not unhappy. I unhappy? No, this is my unhappiness....”
She could hear the sound of her son’s voice coming towards them,
and glancing swiftly round the terrace, she got up impulsively. Her
eyes glowed with the fire he knew so well; with a rapid movement she
raised her lovely hands, covered with rings, took his head, looked a long
look into his face, and, putting up her face with smiling, parted lips,
swiftly kissed his mouth and both eyes, and pushed him away. She
would have gone, but he held her back.
“When?” he murmured in a whisper, gazing in ecstasy at her.
“Tonight, at one o’clock,” she whispered, and, with a heavy sigh,
she walked with her light, swift step to meet her son.
Seryozha had been caught by the rain in the big garden, and he
and his nurse had taken shelter in an arbor.
“Well, au revoir,” she said to Vronsky. “I must soon be getting
ready for the races. Betsy promised to fetch me.”
Vronsky, looking at his watch, went away hurriedly.
Chapter 24.
When Vronsky looked at his watch on the Karenins’ balcony, he
was so greatly agitated and lost in his thoughts that he saw the figures
on the watch’s face, but could not take in what time it was. He came
out on to the highroad and walked, picking his way carefully through
the mud, to his carriage. He was so completely absorbed in his feeling
for Anna, that he did not even think what o’clock it was, and whether
he had time to go to Bryansky’s. He had left him, as often happens,
only the external faculty of memory, that points out each step one has
to take, one after the other. He went up to his coachman, who was
dozing on the box in the shadow, already lengthening, of a thick limetree;
he admired the shifting clouds of midges circling over the hot horses,
and, waking the coachman, he jumped into the carriage, and told him to
drive to Bryansky’s. It was only after driving nearly five miles that he
had sufficiently recovered himself to look at his watch, and realize that
it was half-past five, and he was late.
There were several races fixed for that day: the Mounted Guards’
race, then the officers’ mile-and-a-half race, then the three-mile race,
and then the race~for which he was entered. He could still be in time
for his race, but if he went to Bryansky’s he could only just be in time,
and he would arrive when the whole of the court would be in their
places. That would be a pity. But he had promised Bryansky to come,